The Crack in the Cosmic Egg (25 page)

He spoke in Kahn-like reasoned statistics on probable survivors, rebound
capability, and so on. When I mentioned that "taking out" a hemisphere
meant taking out families like mine he said I exemplified the real
threat to America. It was the weak man who could not operate by sane
rational thought, but who reacted according to emotions, that caused the
grave danger of our time. If only the unemotional, the practical men,
the Pentagonians, could just rule, he said, the problem could be met
squarely, bravely, and
solved
.
I think of the 800 billion dollars in appropriations the Pentagon
can anticipate as of my present writing here, and the new levels of
energy being imaged up by brilliant minds in fantastic university
laboratories sponsored by all that powerful Pentagon money. I think of
Teilhard de Chardin's dream of man "seizing the tiller of the world,"
raching for that energy beyond all atomic and molecular affinities, that
mainspring of the universe. I think of David Bohm and his 10^38 ergs --
not available yet, but, as he mused, when conditions change . . . And
I think on the frustrated Colonel who would "take out" one lobe of this
thinking globe's brain. And I wonder how long before conditions change,
and the Pentagon comes into its own, and that strange surgery might work
its final lobotomy on this living sphere.
And I think on that little bit of planet, Ceres, and all its exploded
parts lying in neat, Bode's Law orbit. Did Ceres, too, reach for that
mainspring of the universe, only to have the thrust seized by "practical
men" solving social problems by removing others? And so I wonder as
Ceres' fragmentations, Pentagons, Colonels, 10^38 ergs, and takings-out
of hemispheres echo like insomniac questions of the night.
Back in the mid-thirties a German told Tom Wolfe that Germany was caught
on a fast train with a madman at the throttle. To jump off seemed suicide,
to stay on even worse. The metaphor holds for today as severely and more
universally. We, too, are caught on a train, a supercharged one, rolling
madly downhill, faster and faster. Though we chart our increases of tempo
with fascinated awe, neither our giddy success nor our new "freedoms"
can cover our underlying alarm.
For
there is no engineer to our train
, not even a madman. And there
is no brakeman. For there is no steering mechanism, and there are no
brakes. And the terrible rumor from the front of the train is true:
there are no tracks out there ahead. The mad machine throws its own down
as it thunders murderously along.
Who can say -- perhaps the brave new optimists are right. Perhaps the
hill
will
last forever, with no sudden curves or precipices along the
way. Perhaps it could happen that way. It just never has before.
The German was right. To stay on the train is madness, to leap from it
suicide. But there is still a Way -- a narrow, hard Way, a difficult crack
between the worlds where, losing your life, you can find it. Therein might
lie the only hope for the train itself, improbable as the notion sounds.
9
don Juan and Jesus
All logical systems, East-West, scientific-religious, cyclic or linear,
originate in an analysis of the way reality is structured. Then,
by various techniques, the system develops as an attempt to use the
analysis to obtain some particular product from the process analyzed.
The idea of eschewing products, and seizing the very process by which
reality organizes is the radical departure found in don Juan's Way of
Knowledge, and in Jesus' Way of Truth. Don Juan and Jesus consider the
world to be an arbitrary construct, not an illusion as in the East or a
fated absolute as in the West. Since the world is an arbitrary construct,
the means of construction, not a particular construct, or the products
of a construct, are the focal point of attention.
Don Juan and Jesus believe the materials of the world to be subject to
dramatic alteration and reorganization by an activity of the mind. Both
systems work to lower the threshold between reality-adjusted thinking
and autistic thinking, and without loss of identity. Both systems have
analyzed the way by which reality events shape, and have then dared to
dissolve the structure of a common domain, the selective world agreed
upon in ordinary social thinking. Such a dissolution would ordinarily
threaten the ego-personality which has been centered and formed
by
the common domain, and this is a risk assumed.
Both don Juan and Jesus have as a goal the seizure of the ontological
function itself and both attempts hinge on a complete surrender
to
the
function. Through a sacrifice of self and absolute obedience to the
way
of the system, union with the process of reality is achieved. There is a
single underlying way by which all reality forms and "union" with this
procedure is possible. However, the system or means of achieving such
union determines the kind of reality then shaping as experience for the
person involved. There is a single unitary core of reality-functioning,
but it is not available in a "pure form." It
is
, in actuality, according
to the method of
actualizing
it. The subject's approach to the function
determines his realization of it.
Don Juan recognizes the ordinary world to be but one of an endless
number of possible constructs. The man of courage and daring in his
culture will explore as many possibilities of this as he can, simply
because the possibilities are there and that is what life is about. Man
can restructure reality in freely-synthesized ways. Though death is
the final victor, to live a strong, hard life, in which reality opens
its endless possibility, is the mark of a warrior, a man of knowledge,
and the only conceivable way to live.
Jesus aims to restructure particular events
within
the world. He aims
toward a special consensus concerning the ordinary reality. Non-ordinary
reality is used only for the sake of the ordinary world. Achieving
a new and different "editorial hierarchy of mind" for the follower
of the Way serves as catalyst for new syntheses when our fated and
autonomous blindnesses, split from our whole mind as they are, lead us
into inescapable dilemmas.
Don Juan seized the ontological process to construct paths of "breathless
wonder." Jesus seizes the process to bridge the modes of mind. Don Juan is
in love with eternity. He is a kind of hedonist of the psyche. Jesus is
in love with time. He is a pragmatic Hebrew, concerned over his fellow
man. The esthetic differences of goals, of techniques and disciplines,
give dramatically different results. But the process of attainment
is similar.
Eastern thought viewed the world as a fated illusion and yearned for the
'real' world. This is a proposition denied by both don Juan and Jesus,
who know the world to be perfectly real. Greek-Stoic thought viewed the
world as a fixed mechanical unit, distinct from the mind of man. This,
too, is denied by don Juan and Jesus, who see the world as a matrix for
continual resynthesis. Both recognize the world as an agreed upon and
practiced construct in a continuum of possible constructs. Both recognize
this as true with any and all possible worlds.
Don Juan created private but equally-real worlds for personal adventure,
and accepted as a natural part of his path the isolation within his
created point of view. Carlos experienced this as "the aloneness of
a single person on a journey." Jesus recognized that no communicable,
shared reality is possible except by agreement between the participants
of that world. So his system was to carry don Juan's open synthesis
into
the ordinary world. Jesus will break with the world of common agreement,
but only under special circumstances and for special goals.
The crack in the egg is sought by Jesus to restructure some specific
problem area in ordinary reality. His system works only in relationships
between people. His non-ordinary states are created as
shared
states
by the constant focus on the needs of the other. No isolation is
engendered. Two or three can gather together and reach a non-ordinary
consensus, a point of agreement different from that of the ordinary
world. Group agreement gives a mutual feedback of verification, sustaining
the non-ordinary even in the ordinary. Carlos might call feeding the five
thousand a special consensus of non-ordinary reality, or healing the
man with a withered arm a special consensus about ordinary reality. In
all cases, filling some need is Jesus' motivation and this proves to be
the only way his particular crack is sustained.
Don Juan spoke of learning by doing as the only way to knowledge. There
was no act of grace suddenly bestowing the goal. And yet there was
the ally, a helper available once the subject had proved himself and
learned to open to and control the technique of bringing about states
of special reality.
Jesus' knowing, too, could only be obtained by doing, a course of
action and thinking as rigorous as don Juan's. In conjunction with
reality-adjusted thinking went an unambiguous single-minded organization
similar to Bruner's "thinking for the left hand." Once this kind of
thinking was practiced, the world no longer split against itself, and
there was freedom to "intervene in the ontological constitution of the
universe," as Eliade put it, since conscious thought then had ready
access to that point in the continuum where there was no judgment,
no distinction between kinds of organization.
Neither don Juan nor Jesus could offer intellectual procedures or
explanations of their way, since logic and reason are only the surface
part of mind, the part splitting a total awareness. Both deny absoluteness
of "sanctity" to any particular system, and, eschewing the products of
systems, they are equally offensive to all systems. The only thing sacred
to don Juan and Jesus is the way in which systems are built. Allegiance
can only be given the
process
if balance of mind is to be achieved
and sustained. Unbending intent is don Juan's requirement, a passionate
concern. Idolatry, Jesus would say, is considering as absolute or true
any
product
of the reality process. The
process
is the only truth,
the only absolute, and the way to freedom.
Don Juan would have but one apprentice in his life, as his own benefactor
had had but one. Many might be called to Jesus, but few would be chosen.
Few would ever find the Narrow Gate. Both systems were esoteric,
difficult to attain, and harder to sustain. Both demanded a risk of
life -- the world turns and rends its heroes -- and, more seriously,
a risk of soul or mind.
Growth within the way was not automatic or assured. The continuing
response of the person gave the context for growth. Peter could be
either the Keys to the Kingdom, or Satan, depending on his use of all
his faculties and openness to the guide.
In his evaluation procedures, don Juan had set the expectancies shaping
Carlos' future experiences. He did this by strong negative and positive
reactions to the contents of Carlos' preliminary ventures. Jesus, too,
reacted with quick negatives and positives to his follower's responses,
questioning and probing their reactions, attempting to determine their
expectancies associated with the Way.
Both systems required "frugality" or conservation of energy. Every aspect
of life had to be reserved for the path. This implies no nonsense of a
limited or fixed quantity of "libido" in a Freudian sense, but ultimacy
of commitment and unambiguous intent. Extraordinary effort was needed
to break with the broad stream that makes up the self-mirroring world of
the ordinary. The activity of restructuring in the face of the strength
of statistical reality called for extremes of energy and determination
in Jesus' Way. And restructuring in the wake of psychedelic dissolution
called for the same commitment and strength in don Juan's Way.
Shelter, nourishment, companionship, and so on, are the needs ruling the
split man. They are the products by which short-circuited demonic power
is wielded by one man over another. All these products of the broad way
must be ruthlessly cut out, boldly denied. Fasting played a role in
both systems. One became a "eunuch" for the sake of the Kingdom. Don
Juan kept telling Carlos that he thought about himself too much. Self
had to be forgotten. Only the path was important.
Both don Juan and Jesus were figures for transference, and both provided
the clues for the initiating of the way. Both promised a helper or ally
who would come and open one to ever-greater levels of growth and power.
Power, an automatic result in both systems, was a crucial point of danger.
The Temptations in the Wilderness graphically typified the main categories
of misuse of power and loss of the Way. In don Juan's system any power
once attained was never lost. Unless voluntarily surrendered, however,
and given over only for the furtherance of more knowledge, the power
became immediately demonic and blocked all further possibility of growth.
Double the talents, Jesus promised, and you would be given twice that many
more -- for more doubling. If
invested
. Otherwise all were taken away.
Any attempt to use power for personal ends destroyed the Way in Jesus'
system as well as don Juan's, and a practical, functional reason,
not a "spiritually moral" one, was the cause. Desire for freedom from
the tensions of reality as found in mystical systems or desire to use
the potentials of the whole mind for ego-interests are out-of-balance
maneuvers; the point of rapport with the whole mind is simply lost. In
the mystical experience the self is dissolved, if only temporarily,
into the continuum. In desires of the ego, the imbalance is toward self,
breaking the rapport with the whole mind, and further trapping the person
in the fixed products of the ordinary world.
In Jesus' system, concern
for
others on the one hand, and total
allegiance to the autistic "spirit" on the other, achieved the otherwise
impossible balance. Clarity of mlnd, a clear understanding of one's
own motivations, was necessary in both systems. Single-vision, or
non-ambiguity, was the prime criterion. The path had to be chosen freely,
as ultimately desirable, having counted the costs of following it.